


The First Night

by Slythernurse97



Series: Life with Merula [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 17:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19405261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slythernurse97/pseuds/Slythernurse97
Summary: Samuel Bennett and Merula Snyde come to an unexpected understanding





	The First Night

It was late when I finally finished detention with Snape: cleaning ancient, crusty glassware and cauldrons in the Potions classroom. The dungeon level seemed even more depressing and dank than usual, with odd, eerie shadows being cast about by the green flames of the wall sconces. I pulled my robes in around me a little tighter and started towards the safety of the Ravenclaw dormitory when an odd snuffling sound made me stop in my tracks.

I knew that I ran a risk of getting in trouble for being out after curfew, doubly so given my location, but my curiosity got the better of me. “ _Lumos,_ ” I breathed and pointed the glowing tip of my wand in the direction of the sound that had captured my attention. “AAHHHH!” shrieked a voice in the alcove behind me, accompanied by a flurry of robes and two pale hands held up to shield the eyes of my victim from the sudden intrusion of light.

“ _Nox.”_ The light extinguished. “Merula? What are you doing out of the Slytherin dorm this late?” I was greeted with knitted eyebrows and a look of utter disdain from Merula’s violet eyes, which I noticed looked a little red around the edges.

“I could ask you the same thing, Bennett,” she sneered.

“Just finished up my detention with Snape, thanks to that little outburst of yours in Potions yesterday,” I coolly replied. 

She snorted derisively. “You deserved it. I swear by Merlin’s beard that I’ll find out what Charm you cast on me to make my Amortentia potion smell like you, no matter how many times I remade it! How desperate are you for attention, anyway, that you would try to enchant me into thinking that I secretly like you?” Merula was now on her feet, advancing threateningly towards me with her hands balled up in fists of rage.

“You still haven’t answered my question, Merula. It’s not like ‘the best witch at Hogwarts’ to risk losing house points by breaking curfew.” The split-second relaxation in her pose told me I had caught her off-guard.

“Shut up, Bennett. Why would you even care? Our houses are so close in points, I’d think that you’d be grateful for any advantage you can get. In fact, I’m surprised you haven’t tried making more noise to try to get Snape out here, although that would mean that you’d lose points too.” She was close enough now that I could see dark circles under her eyes that might have ordinarily passed for the remnants of that day’s smoky eye makeup. “Besides, it’s none of your business why I’m not in the dorm.”

_She’s putting up one heck of a fight,_ I thought. “Merula, for as much as you seem to hate me, I’m sure that you’ve noticed how much I try to help everyone, not just my friends. Barnaby, Tulip, Tonks, Andre… I even helped out Ismelda once, despite her wretched behavior. And you know that I’ve been apprenticing under Madam Pomfrey in the hospital wing and that I want to work at St. Mungo’s as a Mediwizard after graduation, so you know that caring for people isn’t just something I want to do, it’s something I’m good at.”

“So? What is it you think you’re going to help me with?”

“Well, it looks like you haven’t slept in about a week. I’m guessing you were crying alone out here, hoping to not wake anyone in your dorm. And you’ve been avoiding every question in this conversation. You’re obviously upset about _something,_ what’s going on?”

Merula’s cheeks flushed red and the anger on her face intensified if that was even possible. “Stop being so condescending, Bennett! Number one, I’m sleeping fine, thank you! Number two, I was NOT crying! AND even if I _was_ having some kind of problem, which I’m _not,_ I surely wouldn’t tell you!”

I sighed. “Merula, who are you trying to fool? I know this whole thorny, bad girl exterior is an act. Remember over the holidays, when you were sitting all by yourself in the Great Hall? You were determined to be miserable until I invited you to join the rest of us. And what about when you let me borrow your broom? If you really hated me as much as you pretend to, no amount of flattery or convincing would have changed your mind, but you did.” I swallowed hard and braced myself for the potentially fatal consequences of what I was about to do. Merula’s mask of fury turned to absolute shock when I put my hands on her shoulders and gave them a gentle squeeze.

“Bennett, what do you think you’re doing? I swear if you...”

I cut her off, softly saying, “Merula, stop. You might be fooling everyone else with your charade, but I see you.”

Her head flinched to one side and her eyes screwed up tight, wincing as if my words had landed like a slap across her face. “Of course you see me, Bennett, you dunce, I’m right here in front of you. Let me go,” she quietly hissed through her clenched teeth. “Let me _go.”_ She attempted to pull away from me, pressing her back against the stone wall. 

My hands still on her shoulders, I took a half-step closer and whispered, “Merula, you know what I mean. The girl underneath. The one who’s scared and lonely, the one who alienates even her closest friends before they have a chance to betray her. The one who misses her parents and worries about what might be happening to them in Azkaban. The one who can’t sleep at night because of the nightmares, the one who taunts couples because she’s afraid she might never get to experience love. The real you. I. See. _You_.”

Without a change in her facial expression, tears started to ooze out between her clenched eyelids. Merula’s shoulders quivered and she let out one stifled sob as a solitary tear rolled down her pale cheek. Her grimace of rage contorted into a grimace of pain and I gently pulled her closer. Gathering her into the folds of my robes, I wrapped my arms around her as her body heaved violently with silent sobs. She buried her face into my chest and beat against my shoulders with her fists. She let loose a long, muffled wail of anguish into my shirt and years of suppressed pain came flooding out as the last vestiges of pretense were swept away in an emotional meltdown.

I don’t know how long we stood there swaying back and forth as I stroked her back and head, but eventually her sobs ebbed and she felt like a limp dishrag in my arms. Slowly, she pulled away, wiping her eyes and face with her sleeve as she gave a couple final, pitiful sniffs. Though it was apparent that her anger and hatred had drained away, Merula still regarded me warily, as though I could change into a Dementor at any moment. Or maybe it was a tinge of revulsion at the slick of tears and snot she had left on the front of my robes.

Not quite knowing what to expect at this point, I cringed as she pointed her wand at me. “ _Scourgify,_ ” she mumbled weakly, then added, “Sorry,” as the mess disappeared from my chest.

“Nothing to apologize for. I _wanted_ to help you, regardless of what that meant.” I paused. “Do… do you want to talk about it?”

For a second, the old revulsion flashed in her eyes. “With _you_?” But she softened once again. “Sorry, force of habit.” She shrugged and gestured aimlessly, “I mean, it’s late and you’re right, I haven’t slept in ages.”

“Well, tomorrow _is_ the weekend and we don’t have classes. But I understand if you don’t feel like it, especially not with… me.” I turned back towards the stairs. “Goodnight, Merula, get some sleep.” I started off, but two small hands snatched one of mine and held fast.

“I mean… I… Bennett, er, Samuel… Please don’t leave me alone. Not… not right now.” The pleading look in her eyes said she was afraid she might not make it through the night on her own.

I hesitated. “Okay, Merula. But, it’s not like I can come to your dorm or you can come to mine. And the longer we stay here, the longer we risk getting caught.”

Merula cast a furtive glance around the corridor as if an answer might magically appear from the shadows. “I don’t know, it’s just...”

An idea hit me. “Follow me.” I pulled her after me, leading her up the stairwell.

“Where are you taking me, Bennett?” she said in a panicked whisper.

“Somewhere safe,” I promised. We emerged at the seventh-floor landing and I peered down the corridor, looking for the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy in the gloom. I whispered “ _Lumos”_ and tiptoed into the hall. Merula followed me with her red-rimmed eyes and nose so pink it almost glowed in the dark. I felt guilty noticing how disarmingly cute she looked, almost like a little mouse instead of her usual Norwegian Ridgeback demeanor. 

I stopped in front of the tapestry and gently shook my hand loose from Merula’s grasp. “Wait here. It’ll be okay, I promise. I read about this in _Hogwarts: A History_.” She looked puzzled but didn’t give any indication she was about to do anything rash. I conjured up thoughts of a safe place where we could talk together, maybe even sleep, and not be in trouble when daybreak came. Keeping these thoughts in the front of my mind, I paced up and down the hall past the tapestry. I breathed a sigh of relief when, on my third trip past, a door appeared on the wall across from where Merula stood. I saw the look of incredulity on her face and shrugged. “Room of Requirement. We should be safe there for the night.” I pulled the door open and Merula followed me inside.

I was relieved to find a cozy stone-walled room with piles of pillows and blankets on the floor, dim light coming from the sconces burning in each of the four corners. Merula’s bewildered expression gave way to awe as she turned in a circle, taking it all in. “How did you do that, Bennett? I mean… I used to dream of having a room like this when I was little. No bed to make every morning, just pillows and blankets that I could make a nest out of every night at bedtime.”

I shrugged again and repeated, “Room of Requirement. I just imagined what I thought we needed, not what it would look like.” I looked into her eyes. “Maybe it read your mind, too.”

Without breaking my gaze, she said with a half smile, “Or maybe every kid wishes for a room like this at one point or another.” We both began moving pillows around until we had a deep, soft space big enough for both of us to lie down, then we piled the blankets in, Merula preferring the plush velvet ones to my choice of the fluffy goose-down comforters.

“Might as well get comfortable,” she sighed. She shrugged off her Slytherin robes and hung them on a coat hook that I could swear hadn’t been there a split second before. She crouched down and pulled off her scuffed black combat boots, revealing the holes and runs near the toes and heels of her black stockings. My heart almost broke when I realized just what it had meant for her life when her parents were sent to Azkaban.

Merula caught me looking at her as she undid her necktie and started unbuttoning her blouse. “Hey, Bennett, I’m not putting on a show for you here, you know.” For a quick second, I thought I caught a mischievous twinkle in her eye, but it could have been the old animosity creeping back in, too. I looked away and started getting myself ready for bed. When I was finally down to my Puddlemere United t-shirt and my blue and bronze striped boxers, I turned to find Merula already tucked under the covers, the shoulder straps of a ribbed tank top and a black bra visible above the edge of the heavy maroon blanket. She regarded me with a half-smile—or was it a sneer?--and motioned for me to come and settle down on my side of the sleeping space.

“You really are a boy, aren’t you, Bennett?” she said with a half-sarcastic tone as I fluffed up some pillows to lie on and pulled a couple of comforters over top of me.

Warily, I asked, “What do you mean?”

She chuckled and said, “I mean, a beat-up Quidditch shirt under your uniform? And boxer shorts with your house colors? Could you be any more of a stereotype, Bennett?”

I shrugged. “I like to be comfortable, especially when we have to wear those dreadful neckties all day.” I turned on my side and looked into her eyes again. “And why do you keep calling me by my last name? Aren’t we a little past that now?”

This time, she averted her gaze. “I guess, but it’s not like I’m going to change everything overnight. It’s not like I _can_ change overnight.” It sounded like a left-handed admission that what had transpired in the dungeons was going to change the trajectory of our relationship. She pushed the shock of light brown hair up off her forehead, only for it to fall back into her eyes. “Besides, it’s been almost five years now. I don’t know if I can adjust to using your first name.” She smiled demurely up at me through her bangs and I felt a twinge in my stomach. After all the abuse I had taken from her, starting the moment we arrived at Hogwarts, I wasn’t sure how to react to this new side of Merula. I mean, I inexplicably had a crush on her and I obviously cared about her as much as I cared about any of my other classmates, but this almost felt like she was setting me up for something.

I cleared my throat and changed the subject. “Yes, well, okay… you were going to tell me what’s been going wrong, I think?” The look on Merula’s face got serious and she rolled on to her back to stare at the ceiling.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “About that...” She hugged a pillow to her chest and started telling me more about her childhood, filling in the gaps between the bits of information she had let slip in rare moments like in the Great Hall at Christmas. She told me about what a hard person her aunt was, especially since she was one of the few Slytherins at the time that refused to serve Voldemort and disapproved heavily of Merula’s parents’ choice to follow the Dark Lord. She told me about how the Ministry of Magic had seized her family’s estate, leaving her virtually destitute, if not for her aunt’s largesse, if one could call it that. She told me about the Muggle children in her aunt’s neighborhood who would hassle her about her hair and her unique eye color. At times, I could see tears start to form in the corners of those violet eyes again, only for her to quickly wipe them away with a sniffle.

It was hard for me to keep my empathy from slipping into full-blown pity. I felt as if Merula had been waiting her entire life to pour out this information to someone, anyone who would listen with a sympathetic ear and not turn the information into a means of getting ahead, as her fellow Slytherins were prone to do.

She rambled for over an hour, then said, “...and that’s the story of why I am the way I am.” She rolled over onto her side to face me, looking up at me with a mixture of expectation and hesitation. I could see where trying to talk about this with Ismelda would have only lead to ridicule, and Barnaby was obviously too thick to understand how one thing led to another. It must have been excruciating, both for her to have held it all in this long and to have bared her soul to another human being after having held everyone at arms’ length.

“I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to tell me all that,” I murmured. I slid a little closer to her and reached for her hand. For the first time, I noticed how delicate her fingers were, the black polish on her chewed-back nails starkly contrasting with her pale skin. They weren’t bony and sharp like a crone’s, just slender, like the rest of her. I nodded to myself. Yes, delicate. I realized that “delicate” was, ironically, the perfect word to describe Merula, despite her outward appearance.

She coughed and said, “Yes, well… you know, if any of this comes back to me, I’ll know _exactly_ where it came from and I won’t hesitate to end you.” Then, more quietly, she confessed, “It _does_ feel good to let it all go, though.” Her cheeks flushed red again, though not in anger this time. She untangled her fingers from mine then took my hand in both of hers and studied it. “You know, Bennett… I know exactly why my Amortentia potions smelled like you. I knew right away even though I didn’t want to, at least not at first. I know it sounds cliché, but you’re just different. Barnaby is good looking—Merlin’s beard, he’s good looking—but he’s such a dim-witted dunce.” Merula glanced at me. “Do you know I caught him trying to start a conversation with a gargoyle in the Slytherin common room?” She rolled her eyes and gave an exasperated sigh.

“All the other Slytherin boys are just schemers and...” she paused, searching for a word. “Megalomaniacs, I guess. Ben Copper, he’s just a simpering twit. Andre, ugh… jock AND clotheshorse? No thanks. And no offense to your friend Rowan, but he’s all knowledge with no action, which might actually be worse than useless.” She gazed into my eyes again. “When you started helping out Madam Pomfrey and started talking about becoming a Mediwizard, I knew you had a good heart. I knew I wanted to be with you, that I could be myself with you. I just didn’t know how to let you in without looking weak in front of everyone.”

My heart was pounding as she slid in close to me and pulled my arm across her shoulders like a shawl. She looked up at me and whispered, “Kiss me, Samuel.” I hesitated, taken aback, not sure if that was what she really wanted or if I would be taking advantage of her newfound vulnerability. But she took my face in her hands, closed her eyes, and pressed her lips to mine. A pulse of heat washed over me as if someone had hit me with Bombarda. I pulled her against me as tight as I could and she wrapped her arms around my neck. If I had ever imagined a perfect moment in my life, it couldn’t begin to compare with what I was feeling at that moment.

After a minute, she broke off from the kiss, nuzzled into my neck, and sighed. Goosebumps prickled up my arms and the back of my neck as the warmth of her body radiated into me and my nostrils filled with that intoxicating mix of clove, nail polish, and that mysterious, undefinable scent. Her eyelashes fluttered against my skin as she blinked and yawned, “I’m so sleepy. Will you hold me all night?” She pulled back and gazed up at me with a look that reminded me of a child expectantly asking a parent for a treat from Fortescue’s.

I smiled down at her. “Merula Snyde, I’ll hold you for as long as you want.” She grinned and let out a happy little squeal then hugged in close to my neck again. In a few moments, we both drifted off to sleep, locked in our embrace.


End file.
